Leaders of Change: Keith Anderson

KEITH ANDERSON leads strategy and insights for Profitero, which includes product strategy, alliances and teams focused on client success. Previously, he was an industry analyst and consultant for RetailNet Group (now PlanetRetail RNG) and MVI (now Kantar Consulting). He also hosts a podcast and speaks at industry events.

Keith grew up in Colorado, and now lives in Somerville, MA with his wife, daughter and dog. 

Why did you choose to pursue eCommerce in your career? I was focused on growth. I think I’ll always be focused on growth. There’s something thrilling about helping build what’s next or helping others see it.

I lucked my way into industry analysis and consulting very early in my career. I saw the impact technology was already having and expected exponential growth ahead.

Initially, I was something of an evangelist, shouting from rooftops that this was going to happen and that something had to be done, and soon. Everyone had the same questions: Will it really happen? When? How big will it be? Will it be incremental? Will it be profitable? Who will win? Who will lose?

So a lot of my energy went into establishing baseline facts and exploring scenarios for how things might play out.

As it became clearer that it was happening, the next phase of my career was about helping leaders define what to do, and why and what it would take to do it.

There was a lot of emphasis on establishing foundational eCommerce strategies, organizations and capabilities during this phase.

Then, as eCommerce emerged as a sustainable, scalable growth platform, the focus again shifted, this time to execution and performance optimization. That brought me “into the arena,” in a sense.

What is your biggest strength, and how have you used it for your success in eCommerce? Curiosity. Wondering why and how and pursuing every avenue of discovery until the answers are clearer.

As in any emerging or rapidly-evolving discipline, a lot of the work to be done in eCommerce isn’t well-defined or documented.

So self-awareness about how little you know and the urge to always be learning more can carry you far, especially if you’re generous with what you learn.

What is the weirdest skill or talent to come in handy in your eCommerce experience? Perhaps the ability to analogize. Anyone that knows my analogies will acknowledge why this qualifies as weird.

A lot of what drives successful outcomes in eCommerce – especially in large organizations – is about establishing a foundational understanding of key concepts and vocabulary, aligning on how to define success, and helping everyone see their role in contributing to the larger objective. 

In that context, using the familiar to explain the unfamiliar and being able to translate from a specialized knowledge domain to more general audiences turns out to be very helpful. 

Translating between business and technology, physical and digital, executive and practitioner – it all helps increase clarity and alignment.

How have you most successfully influenced change within your organization (or with your clients)? Inside our organization, I try to encourage a culture that acts swiftly on behalf of our customers, focusing on results. I think our team feels a deep sense of ownership and accountability for their success, and I hope our clients would agree.

What was your most “valuable” career failure, and why? I’ve started a handful of side projects that ultimately fizzled out. Some inside the companies that employed me, others outside.

The ones that failed weren’t spectacular failures. They just never got traction, or got a little traction, but lost money.

But together they taught me some incredibly valuable lessons about learning by doing, the strengths and limitations of a 1- or 2-person team, the distinction between a great idea and a great business and the power of focus.

In the last five years, what new belief, behavior or habit has most improved your life? Just under five years ago, when I was burning the candle at both ends and really starting to feel worse for the wear, I decided to hit the Reset button and focus on eating better, sleeping better, and exercising more.  

I made a few pretty significant changes in these areas, some of which stuck and some of which didn’t.

But ultimately, making a commitment to take better care of myself has paid dividends ever since. I feel fitter, happier, more productive… 

What are you learning right now? I’m learning new approaches to keeping an organization in scale-up mode fun and effective.

What drives high performance at a brand-new start-up, when just a handful of people seemingly do and know everything, is very different than at a scale-up, when the growth rate of customers and colleagues necessitates new ways of working.

What are the 1-3 songs that would make up your career soundtrack today?

• Pocket Calculator by Kraftwerk
• Fitter, Happier by Radiohead
• Elmo’s Song by Elmo: Listeners Beware! It’s my daughter’s favorite but infectiously catchy. Even more impressive considering that Elmo wrote the music; he wrote the words.

What are the 1-3 books you’ve gifted the most or that have greatly influenced your life, and why?

• Microsoft Access 97 Bible: Gold Edition: When I was in high school, my older brother built one of the earliest fantasy football sites on the web. This was way before Yahoo Sports, ESPN, etc. At the time, fantasy league commissioners were manually entering player stats and building spreadsheets each week. So my brother hired some folks to enter the stats from each game into a central database and built a website to let the commissioners manage their leagues much more efficiently. I asked him how he did it. He disappeared for a few minutes and came back with this 1,500+ page guide to building databases with Microsoft Access. He said it was mine if I wanted it. I only ever made it through about a third of the book. But it impressed on me that it was possible, through self-education and effort, to solve problems that affect you and many others.
• The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker: Alas, I don’t often give the Access 97 Bible away as a gift. So, if you’re looking for gift-able books, I’d recommend this one. Depending on where you are in your career when you read it (and you should read it as early as possible) it may feel very “high-level,” or like basic common sense. But it’s a quick, enjoyable read that distills a handful of critical principles and approaches I think will serve most people very well regardless of their specialization or experience level. And Bezos reportedly recommends it, too.

If you could have a gigantic billboard for the world to see with anything on it, what would it say, and why? Idealistic me: “Leave things better than you found them.”

Cynical me: “Billboard ads work! The whole world sees this one. Call me to advertise.”

What are the worst recommendations or advice you have heard related to eCommerce? “Don’t worry, they tried online grocery during Web 1.0 and it doesn’t work. It’ll never happen.”

There were some very important lessons learned during that era. But drawing conclusions about the present (or worse, the future)—and choosing to do nothing—based on outcomes from the pre-broadband, pre-smartphone, pre-automation, etc. era has turned out to be pretty ill-advised.

More broadly, I’ve seen way too many executives relentlessly apply traditional success criteria and operating models toeCommerce and other emerging business models.

What advice would you give to a future leader of change about to enter business, or specifically the eCommerce field? Be curious and learn as much as you can about what happens upstream and downstream in the “value chain” of the business you’re in – that is, the end-to-end process and stakeholders in your company or industry.

How does your work combine with others to produce an end product? What do end users do with that product? How do they define and measure success? What are their challenges? What else do they spend their time on? What are they working on next?

The better you understand the work that your suppliers, colleagues and customers do—and how you can impact their outcomes, and vice versa—the better your judgment will become in increasingly diverse situations.

You’ll make better decisions in less time, build the right skills, and add more value to more people.

What specific, industry-related change do you believe will happen that few others seem to see? You had to put me on the spot, huh?

I’m glad this isn’t time-bound; it’s harder predicting when things will happen than what will happen.

Here’s a speed round of things I think are getting too much or too little attention:

• The next phase of UI evolution (AI, voice, gesture, AR) will be very disruptive as it hits mainstream adoption â€“ much more so than the shift from desktop to mobile.
• The last-mile delivery space will undergo a massive wave of consolidation over the next 24 months.
• Automation in warehouses, stores, on the last mile, and in homes will have a similar impact, sooner than it seems.
• Amazon will not go on an aggressive buying spree of floundering B&M chains as they are speculated to.
• Walmart/Jet will emerge as a key player, but over a longer timescale than most expect and without much near-term impact on Amazon.

What is the last thing you bought online, and why? A 40-lb bag of sensitive-stomach dog food for our good boy via Prime Now, earmuffs (you should see the cowlicks I get from wearing a hat!) and a mop and a mop bucket which I never realized I needed until my daughter became mobile.

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Leaders of Change is a weekly interview series featuring select industry pioneers who are driving the evolution of commerce, the consumer and everything in between. If you would like to recommend a Leader of Change for consideration, please reach out to me on LinkedIn.